


The Importance of Proper Interpretation

by theothershoe (lidercke)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Moriarty is dead but not really, Post-Reichenbach, dark!john, overprotectiveJohn, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lidercke/pseuds/theothershoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"'From the point of view of the criminal expert,' said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, 'London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Professor Moriarty.'"</i> </p><p>The Adventure of the Norwood Builder<br/>/A. C. Doyle/</p><p>After the events of the Fall, John and Sherlock are struggling to find back to the life they had. John is definitely not well, but will Sherlock notice it? Contains an unhealthy amount of angst, darkness and depressive thoughts, be careful. The story is written from John's POV, in first person tense. Mind your step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The normal ones. No one ever talks, writes or makes a movie about the normal, good-hearted, persistent ones who get up, go to work, smile at people then get home to watch telly till they fall asleep on the couch, satisfied with the insignificant corner which is their place in the world. The ones who live their lives between the lines of a timetable, horizontal and vertical lines determining their circadian rhythm.

All the great stories are about heroes and villains. So is Sherlock’s. And Moriarty’s, of course. They are the perfect match - that bastard was right from the beginning – but, unfortunately, Sherlock realized it too late. They were alike and Sherlock needed him. He still needs him but now Moriarty’s gone. What will Sherlock become without his archenemy?

There are minor, unimportant cases: kidnapping, blackmail and, on lucky days, even a murder turns up to entertain him, but I can see how he is sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of boredom with every breath he takes.

There are days – long, nasty ones – when the silence in Baker Street drives me up to the wall. No wonder he gets bored. They were alike, and I comprehend – even if he would never admit it – that he is mourning him. The hero and his villain. No place for me here, only in the corner, a silent observer, but I’m okay with that, thank you.

A steaming cup of tea in the morning, while I’m scanning the papers for any noteworthy news, then I spend the rest of the day trying to keep Sherlock from going to prison or to a psychiatric hospital. It’s fine like this. I never wanted the main part, the leading role in the play. I’m not James Moriarty and I never could be. It would be nice to say that this is because I’m not a heartless monster, a psychopath. That is, though it might be true, only one side of the coin. I must admit that I’m not intelligent enough, I’m not brilliant enough, not a genius. Not even close to that. I’m just anybody. Sherlock would never see a dangerous enemy in me. I’m not a match for him, for his genial mind. I’m more of a fence, a system of vertical and horizontal lines that keeps him inside of what we call “real world”, I don’t let him wander too far.

He misses him. I can see that when he is lying on the couch, knees up, staring at the ceiling, waiting with every little nerve-ending for something to happen. His mind is tearing itself apart.

Last night, we watched telly. One of the rare occasions when he was actually interested in a show; a documentary about the most famous serial killers of all times. Of course he was continually correcting the narrator, but he was having fun, and I love him all thrilled and annoyed, electricity in his eyes. Recently, it’s quite rare.  
No murders, or only easy ones, sometimes a six. Moriarty has set the standards far too high, he was a ten, maybe even above. After all, Sherlock had to kill himself to beat him. He made Sherlock leave me. He was clever.

I couldn’t hit a five, I think. Luckily, that’s not what I’m for.

He giggled and laughed and grunted at the commentary. He was out of that dark place he is retiring to so often these days. Last night he was with me; I could see him smile, he looked at me, didn’t turn his eyes into himself. At that moment I was interesting enough to be looked at. Not in the way he used to look at Moriarty, obviously - that complete, strained attention - but he acknowledged my presence and I was happy with that.

Back before, at the beginning of our acquaintance, I thought it might be possible for me, sometimes, to hold his gaze only on myself, but I realized very soon that I did not require his full and undivided attention. He will never give it to me because I’m too easy to figure out. For him, I’m an open book; no mystery, no puzzle here. Boring. That’s what I am.  
But somehow, I don’t mind it as long as he lets me in his life. I know my part and I’m okay with it. Really. Though my lines are quite repetitive; “Amazing.” “Awesome.” “Brilliant” “Fantastic.” My actions are restricted to fist-fights and trigger-pulling. On exceptional occasions, I have the honour to be the catalyst to the chemical reaction in his genial brain that leads us to the killer. On these occasions, I’m genuinely happy.

The only thing that hurts me is that I must see him falling apart. Each day it’s worse. Last night, he was like his former self; the one before Moriarty’s death. We laughed together, ordered Thai food, went to bed at a reasonable time. I heard him fall asleep before I went upstairs. Today he is drifting away again. He is being pulled into the depth of his own mind and I’m watching him struggle to find the way out. From time to time, he raises his long hands upwards, stares at them as though to check if he still possesses a physical body.

“I’m bored, John”, he complains, like a petulant child.

I give him the Sudoku from my paper; he solves it in two minutes then folds the page into an origami-gun that he aims at his head. He pulls the imaginary trigger and pretends to die, but out of the corner of his eyes, he is watching my reaction. My blood freezes, but I’m trying to stay calm. I roll my eyes and step to him, pull the paper-gun out of his hand and throw it to the bin.

“What about your experiment? The one with the fingernails?”

“Finished. And anyway, I’ve foreseen the results, just had to be hundred percent sure. The results proved me right.”

“Of course they did.”

I sigh and try very hard to come up with something, but finally must admit failure. I’m not Moriarty, I can’t distract him for more than five minutes, I can’t give him what he needs. 

Distraction.

It hurts me. Not as if I was jealous or something, but his agony reaches directly into my heart and tears it out in tiny little pieces. Just as his unique, brilliant mind is being torn apart. We should place one in the classifieds: Looking for heart and brain in good condition, please contact John Watson at Baker Street 221/b.

“John.” His voice again.

“Yes?”

“I’m bored. Do something.”

Oh God. It’s going to be a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Somanyhands, my amazing and very patient beta!


	2. Chapter 2

He hasn’t slept at all. He is lying on the couch in the same position I left him last night. Though his eyes are closed, his breathing betrays him. It’s the third day in a row and I’m seriously considering giving him sedatives. Maybe not the best idea in the light of his past, but insomnia can actually kill.

“John.”

He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t honour me with his gaze, merely notices my presence, as always.

“You should sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“I can give you pills.”

At least his eyes are open now. They are wide open, with sparks of anticipation.

“What kind of pills?”

“Don’t get all enthusiastic.” I frown while balancing the immediate gains and the long-term damages. “I have Thorazine.”

“Two.”

“One. Non-negotiable. Take it or leave it.”

The anticipation on his face is glaring and I have to turn away. I head upstairs for the pills, then return with them and a glass of water. I sit down on the armrest of the couch, behind his head. From this angle, the dark circles under his eyes are even more frightening, but at least they convince me that I’m doing the right thing. He rolls out his tongue and looks up to me like a puppy waiting for treats. I place the pill gently on his soft, pink tongue; my index finger slightly brushing his upper lip. A shiver runs along my spine. He closes his eyes again and swallows the medicine without water, his Adam’s apple moving heavily.

“Thank you, John.”

I don’t reply. He seems so young now, I barely can bear the sight of his white face, fragile hands. I’m drowning in his innocence. How he can cause me so much pain is beyond my understanding.

He is asleep in ten minutes.

*

He sleeps twenty six hours and wakes up in a good mood, offering to go to Tesco to get something for breakfast. I allow him to, even though I know it’s always a bad sign when he shows interest in our everyday life. Either he has remorse or the plans of a catastrophic experiment in his mind that needs my approval. This time it must be the later and I’m rather delighted by it. He already has my approval, but I let him do the shopping anyway.

He even prepares the breakfast: ham and eggs, toast, orange juice, today’s newspaper, on a large wooden tray placed in my lap as I’m sitting in my armchair, resting my neck on the top of the backrest.

“You don’t have to bribe me, you know. It’s pointless, I’m out of sleeping pills.”

“I’m not intending to bribe you.” He sounds – mimes to be? – offended. A few minutes of silence, both of us occupied with the food. Then:

“I’m going to start an experiment.”

“Hm,” I offer as a response, between two bites of toast. Eating is the best way to mask emotions.

“I need you for that.”

“Me?”

“Well, not especially you, but a living human being, and you are just the obvious, most available choice.”

“How honourable.”

“It’s not going to be painful.”

“This is getting more and more appealing. You really know how to seduce me.”

I contribute. Of course I will, but I have to make him feel that it doesn’t come easily – although it does. I’m going to lay motionless while he is sticking electrodes on me, running generous amounts of volts through my body, or poking at me with sticks and tweezers, and he knows this. I would do anything for him and it’s kind of frightening, kind of liberating. I don’t feel any more the pressure to set limits in my relationship with him. We are past the limits, if they ever existed. The effort of describing this between us gives me a headache. I would do anything for him. Does he know it?

*

He gets bored of the experiment in two days. A return to the couch, the scene of his eternal fight with his own mind. I will never be able to look at that piece of furniture without seeing a battlefield. Spattered with his blood. Do I really have to watch him dying? What am I supposed to do? I’m not Jim Moriarty.

This bloody couch. One day I’ll burn it. It traps his soul, like a fly-catching paper; sticky and lethal. I will claim his soul back. I will burn the couch and hold him in my arms, watching the flames and laughing. I’m not well, I think.

“John.” He throws himself onto his back, facing the ceiling instead of the wall, a swooning wrist dramatically raised to his forehead.

“I’m bored.”

You don’t say. By this point, I am able to tell it from my first intake of air in the morning. His boredom is a dark cloud over Baker Street and half of London. I swear even stock prices fall at London Stock Exchange, on the days Sherlock Holmes is bored.

“What can I do in this matter?”

A frustrated sigh.

“Nothing.” With that, he turns back to the wall, barricading himself with the Union Jack pillow, childishly.

I decide to call Lestrade and tell him to dig up some cold files, no matter from which dusty drawer or hidden basement stock.

“Is it so bad this time?” Lestrade’s voice is genuinely concerned.

“Worse than ever. I’m afraid he is going to do something stupid.”

He understands perfectly well what I mean. After all, he’s known Sherlock for much longer than I have; he saw him at his lowest, before they started to work together.

“I will try my best, but can’t promise anything.”

“Thank you anyway.” I hang up and sink back to my armchair, putting the phone on the little table beside, next to my half-empty tea cup. I hope he is going to call me back soon.  
For a while, I examine the lazy waves of Sherlock’s dressing gown, spread around him, falling to the floor from the edge of the couch; a decadent blue pool of silk.

There is nothing more I can do. Waiting for a miracle, waiting for the phone to ring, a client to arrive.

I’m helpless. Powerless. I can’t help him, can’t cure his lethal illness: his boredom. I fail as a friend and as a doctor.

The miracle doesn’t happen this day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Somanyhands for the beta, the britpick, and the encouraging words! <3


	3. Chapter 3

I’m at Tesco, wandering along the rows, taking my time. This is one of those occasions when I pretend to have a normal life, just like the other customers; the young couple, the woman with unnaturally bluish-black hair and the man with a sheepish look on his face, or the old lady and her grandson - they must be spending the week-end together; their basket is full of jelly sweets, crisps and coke, Mummy wouldn’t be happy if she found out about this pile of junk food.

I wonder what I look like from the outside, what other people can assume about me. If they observe the contents of my basket, they can easily deduce that I’m doing the shopping for two; that I don’t live alone. They can guess a wife, more probably a child, given the amount of milk I purchase. Certainly not a half-mad consulting detective with rampant mood-changes and a penchant for creepy experiments. A half–mad consulting detective who keeps a human skull on the mantelpiece and who carries on talking to me, even when I’m not there. A consulting detective with a sad smile and heartbreakingly naive conceptions about interpersonal relationships. Suddenly, I realise that I’m smiling to myself again; a wide grin spreading across my face, and there goes my dose of a normal life. Time to go home; I have been away for a while.

On my way back, my legs are pulling me faster and faster, as if I had an important meeting. No. Worse. As if I had to be somewhere else urgently. A bad presentiment, inexplicable and uncanny. I’m almost running now, turning at the corner, tearing open the front door, hurriedly, and rushing into the kitchen.

“Sherlock,” I call out, trying to catch my breath. No answer. Not unusual though. “I’m back.”

I put the bags onto the counter. One of them falls over, and there are kiwis, apples, tomatoes everywhere.

“Sherlock”

I step over the mess and head for the living room. There he is, sitting in his armchair, but something is wrong: he is holding his hands in front of himself, staring at them as if they weren’t part of his own body. My throat is closed in panic, I have to force air into my lungs to be able to speak.

“Sherlock, what’s wrong?”

Then I catch it, the angry red scars, the burned flesh and the blisters; the mess that is in place of his hands. His perfect, elegant, artistic hands; long fingers and light pink nails manicured with meticulous care, now ruined.

“Oh my God,” I crouch in front of him, shocked. “What happened to your hands?” Of course, I immediately recognise the symptoms of chemical burn, my real question is “how did it happen?”. He understands nevertheless.

“A minor accident. There was some hydrochloric acid involved.” Sherlock is perfectly impassionate, showing no signs of pain. Only his unnatural, awkward posture betrays him.

“Why didn’t you call me?” And why am I shouting? It doesn’t help.

Sherlock casts an indifferent glance at me.

“I wiped the acid off and rinsed it before it could cause more damage. There was no reason to call you, nothing you could have done.”

Yeah, I’m useless, already knew that. Tell me something new.

“Let me see.” That’s all I manage to say.

I take his wrists to pull his hands closer. It looks terrible: flesh and skin melted together in a foamy mixture with every shade of red, pink and orange on the spectrum. But I know, from experience, that chemical burn is always like this, and to my relief, it seems that the deeper layers of the tissue are unharmed. The damaged skin is going to peel off, and yes, it will look awful for a while, but then a new layer will form. The human body is a miracle in my eyes. Momentarily, the most important thing is to protect the damaged area from infections, to soothe the pain and to scold Sherlock for his imprudence when handling dangerous chemicals.

“You need a bandage. I’m afraid you are not going to play the violin for some time.” I search for my first-aid kit we keep at hand in the living room.

Sherlock sticks to his silence and, if I didn’t know better, I would think he doesn’t feel pain. But I know he does. I can see it, pick it up from the curve of his neck, the tense muscles of his arm. I can feel it in the air, no matter how hard he is trying to hide it.

Oh Sherlock, you are contradiction put into a marble statue. Reluctant to show any sign of pain, but throwing spectacular tantrums because of a little boredom.

Later, I prepare dinner. He can’t use his hands at all, they are thick and clumsy with the bandage on them, totally incapable of holding a fork or a knife. So it’s just natural that I feed him, and we are laughing when I give the perfect impression of Mycroft trying to navigate the fork-plane stuffed with rice into the mouth of a two-year-old child. (Also, Sherlock gives a hell of an impression of a two-year-old, but I’m not surprised by that.) It sounds terrible, but I’m almost happy about the accident. It distracts us, breaks the patterns, it’s _something_.

I’m almost happy about it, except that I’d rather swallow hydrochloric acid than let it affect his hands. They are so sensitive. The way he holds the bow, the way he steeples his fingers when thinking, the way he runs one elegant finger across the page when reading, God, I think I’ve developed a fetish about his hands.

He lets me feed him and seems to be contented with it. Now he needs me, I’m not useless any more. I enjoy nourishing him, turning peas and meat and fries into Sherlock, iron into gold. He accepts food happily when it comes from me, even though most of the time he doesn’t pay attention to the elementary needs of his body, he ignores them, doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t do relationships. His patterns can be broken only by me. For a moment, I feel special. An illusion, and a dangerously beautiful one.

The expression on his face is so affectionate, he is utterly vulnerable. Yes, now he needs me and he is fully aware of it. Startled by it. A message in his eyes, _never leave me, John_ , and I’m looking at him with pure admiration. The afterglow of laughter is still on our faces, a half-smile, a curve of lips slowly turning into amazement.

He must have caught something on my face that fazes him. Now he is observing me like I’m a puzzle to solve. Those all-knowing eyes, and it’s ridiculous, in fact, how they know nothing, they can’t see through me. They are able to perceive overly-complex patterns at a crime scene, capture the imprint of a feather on a glass surface- it actually happened once -, but they are proved deficient when it comes to John Watson, they are blind for the alarming shade of red that my soul is these times.  
 _Colour-blind you are, Sherlock._

However, I can make out the shades of green, blue and gold in his iris, the curve of lips that are completely unaware of their own sensuality. I lift one hand, then the other, touching his face from both sides.

Our gazes are locked onto each other.

“Sherlock”

“Yes, John?” He is puzzled, doesn’t know what’s coming next. Maybe he thinks I’ll kiss him. I’ve never kissed him.

“You must promise me,” I start slowly, “You must promise me that you’ll never do anything like this to yourself again.”

“I told you it was an accident.” He rolls his eyes impatiently.

“But we both know that these kinds of accidents are more likely to happen when you are bored and get reckless. You have to be more careful.”

For a moment, he looks sad.

“You have no idea, John.”

“No, I don’t,” I cut in and taste the bitter savour of anger in my mouth.

That’s the point, isn’t it? I cannot understand the miseries of a lone genius. How could I, my mind is so simple, _barely used_. But my anger evaporates when I realise that he is actually miserable, defenceless against this enemy attacking from inside, an invisible worm destroying our life. He has just crippled himself in his vain attempt to fight back.  
I read guilt, sadness, helplessness in his eyes. His posture is an announcement of surrender. It makes me weak.

“It’s okay, Sherlock.”

“I’m sorry, John.” He leans forward, resting his forehead on my shoulder.

“You don’t have to say sorry.”

My hand is stroking his hair. We’ve never been this close before. My heart aches in my chest and I catch myself holding my breath.

“Will you help me through this?”

“You know I would do anything for you,” I whisper. “Anything, Sherlock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, my fantastic beta, Somanyhads made it readable for you. :)


	4. Chapter 4

.  
The following days are like paradise for me - everything I’ve ever longed for - but I feel the most excruciating remorse at the same time. Walking the battlefield with Sherlock again. This time, the adversary troops are moving inside my head; a violent fight, and I’m in the middle of it, staring at the bloodstream, petrified. How can this be my world? Since when have I started finding pleasure in the fragility, the defencelessness of another human being? God forgive me, but I’m enjoying this.

He’s always been so self-sufficient; a beautiful mind in its perfectly fitting setting, a universe in itself. So independent, and consequently lonely of course, but he never minded it, he chose - even embraced - loneliness. Walked his own way, where there was no lane for others. Now, he is depending on me. A few days of paradise: we are living in perfect symbiosis.

In the morning, I shave him, leading the razor along his jawline; I conceive it as an act of creation, carving his face out of the white foam I apply abundantly. I’m very gentle and careful; I couldn’t bear the sight of blood at the trail of my blade.

I make him breakfast and, on that one morning after the accident, I feed him again. He commits himself to me, complete trust, _colour-blind, colour-blind._

I read out from the newspapers, make tea, we watch telly and go to bed early in the evening. I guess, in his sleep, he finds solace after the torments of idle days. I hope he does.  
This night too, I help him to change into his pyjamas. He is sitting on the bed, after a shower, innocently clean, yet all the tiredness of the fight buried under the scent of sea and lavender of his soap. I’m on one knee in front of him, buttoning up the top of his pyjamas. He is immaculate in the light blue cotton, the moment is overwhelming, words fly away at every direction of the compass rose, _what have you done to me, Sherlock?_ What are you doing to me?

Perfect symbiosis. His chest is white, impossibly white, whiter than the gauze covering his hand. I shield the glaring fragility with pale blue cotton; a pitiful attempt to protect him. I must protect him. Nothing in my life has ever been this important: not when I fought for queen and country; not when I fruitlessly tried to keep Harry away from the bottle; not even when I saved lives in the Afghan desert. A sense of duty. The expression is just finding its meaning, at this very moment.

He is avoiding eye-contact; his gaze is distant, but I’m used to his distance by now. It means protection as well; on his part it’s the best he can offer me. I don’t tell him that he’s failed. That he failed that day at Bart’s and he keeps failing since then. I let him believe that I’m unharmed. 

I’m not. Part of me wishes he would notice. Part of me wants to collapse. I eliminate that part; lock it away. Can’t let it speak because I must stay strong to keep him from harm.  
I help him to climb into bed, tugging the duvet around his lithe figure. It’s like building walls around him. It makes me feel better, knowing that there is a barrier between him and the world, even when I’m not here. 

“Good night, John.”

“Good night, Sherlock.”

That’s how our life goes by recently.

*

The fourth day after the accident – Sherlock doesn’t need help anymore for basic everyday tasks – Mrs Hudson drops in and asks if I could give her a hand with a picture she wants to hang up in the kitchen. Reluctantly, I leave Sherlock alone and hope he won’t set fire to the flat while I’m away.

After the quite tiring and annoying task – _a little bit lower, my dear. No, no, just a little bit... now higher, oh it’s too much_ – Mrs H. offers me a tea that I accept, mainly because I think I deserve it after all this, and partially because, judging by her uncomfortable expression, it seems she wants to have a word with me  
In fact, she is a little bit antsy; uncertain. As if she didn’t know how to put it, or whether to put it at all.

“You know, young man, I’m worried about you.” She is almost whispering; the tone she uses to discuss disagreeable topics. “Are you sure you are doing well? I mean, don’t you need any help with... this situation, you know, Sherlock at home, injured...?”

Oh. Just the usual mother-hen talk I receive every month or so. 

“Thank you for your concern, Mrs Hudson, but Sherlock is better now. Soon, I’m going to remove the bandage and he can commit his usual stupidities with the usual élan.”

“I see.” Mrs Hudson replies, and presses her lips together whilst sipping from the cup, which should be physically impossible but she manages somehow. “But, my dear, it’s not Sherlock I’m worried about. It’s you.” She must see the surprise on my face, but she goes on talking before I can open my mouth. “I’ve known Sherlock for a good deal of time, I know he likes dramatic and there is always that creepy, gothic air around him, but he always comes out well in the end. But you, my dear, you are too sensitive, don’t take offense. You haven’t left the flat in the last four days, not even for a half an hour.”

I force my features into an uneasy smile. I’d rather shout at her, but I recognise that would only add fuel to the fire.

“I’m fine, Mrs Hudson. Just been too busy nursing Sherlock to think about anything else.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she nods, knowingly. 

I still don’t get it, but I keep smiling; trying to give the impression of a well-balanced, responsible adult. Which, undoubtedly, I am. 

I have the distressing feeling that, contrarily to Sherlock’s, Mrs Hudson’s eyes see straight through me.

I put my empty cup back to the saucer with just a slightly more accentuated cling than would be normal - _thank you for the tea, Mrs Hudson_ \- and I flee the flat as fast as I can without being ridiculous. Mentally, I see her disapproving face as she is wagging her head slowly behind my back. 

What did she try to imply? That I should leave Sherlock alone? That he is dangerous? Did she try to frighten me away? And I thought she loved him almost in a maternal way, now it turns out she is one of the bunch of people who see him as a strange, potentially dangerous sociopath. _A freak._ Or have I got it wrong? I don’t want to ask her again about the topic. I don’t even want to look at it at all. I’m going to ignore it. It doesn’t exist.

I have more important things to deal with. He has nobody but me: even Mrs H. can’t be trusted. I have to keep him safe and in one piece. Clean. A mission; the only one that matters. He is so alone. 

When I return to our flat, he is in the kitchen, fumbling with the kettle and a teacup, which naturally ends up shattered on the floor. It’s just him: normally, he can wait for me for hours to pass him the phone which is on the table two metres from him, but, when he feels limited, restricted, he goes to testing mode and acts against his usual self just for the sake of experimenting. Just to see what he is able to do before being stopped (by me). He needs to know what he can get away with. 

“I’ll clean this up,” I offer immediately, as I enter. 

He sighs, resignedly, and heads for the living room.

Having finished with the sweeping, I follow him. He is sulking on the couch, legs stretched out, arms folded against his chest. 

“You could have waited for me, you know.”

He doesn’t deign to answer me, not as if I don’t know what is in his twisted mind: he has never been good at relying on other people, not even on friends or family – it’s enough just to think of Mycroft. He hates to be dependent - on people, at least.

I sit down next to him and unfold his arms gently. Taking one palm in my hand, I start to remove the bandage. The skin under it looks worse than the first day, but that’s due to the peeling, I can see patches of light, peach-coloured new skin underneath the dead layers. 

“Are you going to put it back on?” he asks.

“No, it’s healing fast. There is no danger of infection at this stage. The blisters have cleared off. But you’d better wear a thin cotton glove for a few days because the new skin can be oversensitive.” 

“I can perceive that,” he says, and suddenly I become very aware of the contact of our fingers. I stroke the inside of his palm lightly, as if examining.

“Any pain?”

“No.” He closes his eyes. 

I continue by brushing his fingers, running my digits along each of them. He is taking in fast, sharp breaths through his nose. 

“John?” His voice comes from the back of his throat; deep, seeking reassurance. 

“Does it hurt?”

“No. Just... too sensitive.”

“Sorry.” I pull my hands away. 

He seems disappointed. Why? He should just say it; just ask me, he must know that. Maybe he doesn’t know how to ask. Maybe he doesn’t dare. 

Words are forming, hanging on his lips, but they are incapable of living. They are diving into the sound of a sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a million to Somenyhands for the beta.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my amazing beta, Somanyhands. Seriously, I'd be lost without her!

I would happily resurrect Moriarty if that meant that I wouldn’t have to watch his agony. I would do anything to stop this. He is suffering, and I’m helpless: a passive assistant to his descent into a personal hell. There are no cases; no books; no experiments: nothing that could sustain his attention.

I’m afraid. 

Afraid of the things he might do, and afraid of the things I might have to do to stop him. But I’m going to do them nevertheless; it’s decided. It was decided back there, at Bart’s, when he deduced me to pieces, and later when he put me back together again. The least I can do, in return, is not let him fall apart. Somewhere along the way I’ve changed: he has changed me.

I wish I could be James Moriarty; as clever and unscrupulous. Did he love him, I wonder sometimes? He must have. Two halves of a whole. That’s the only way it makes sense. Their intelligence, their passion for the game, even their fucking posh style is the same; mirror images of each other. But Sherlock has chosen not to make the step through the looking glass; he is stuck this side with me. He doesn’t belong here. He belongs to the game: he is the white king on the gigantic chessboard on the other side of the mirror. _What are you doing here with me, Sherlock?_ Without the dark king, he can’t find his place.

He is wandering around the flat, casually touching, lifting objects as if considering how to break them or how to hurt himself with them - it was definitely better when he couldn’t use his hands. 

I’d like to strap him down, but I guess that would be just cruel: that wouldn’t soothe the pain. What can it be like, those rambling thoughts in your head? Must be like shards of glass poking at your brain from the inside. I don’t know. I can’t even imagine.

He throws himself onto the couch – still not burned, but the day is coming; unstoppable. He can’t stay there; not this time. He is pacing the room again, and finally he collapses in my armchair, burying his face in his hands, still dark blue gloves on them. 

I step behind him and stroke the shorter, soft curls at his nape. They are damp with sweat. 

“John.” He is shaking. “I need some.”

“No, Sherlock. We’ve talked about this, and you made me promise that I would never let you take this turn. Do you remember?”

He is biting on his thumb; I have to force it out of his mouth. I’m trying hard not to give in to the pain that radiates from my heart through my whole body.

“You don’t understand.”

No, I don’t, of course. I’m neither an exceptionally intelligent sociopath nor a psychopath. I’m just John Watson; an ordinary army doctor who likes long walks and the comfort of a hot tea. I know nothing about suffering. How could I? 

Only great minds like Sherlock Holmes can understand the depths to which one can descend in desperation. A passive observer of the game is not allowed to feel anything; not allowed to mourn. The only thing he has rights to is endurance. Enduring is what I have: you have alone, and I have this. The solidity of a steel beam in the storm, not bothering about pouring rain or stormy wind. Not bothering about blood on the pavement. The image of this senseless being is somehow comforting. Even though it’s a lie. A lie, because even steel can break.

I feel like my heart detaches itself from my body, and the word duplicates as well. There are suddenly two realities: one for my heart and feelings and unbearable pain, and one for my body: senseless and automatic; destined to protect him. Mingling the two would be disastrous. There is a hint of a hysterical laughter in my throat; I don’t let it out. We must keep each other together. A vein throbs in my forehead. I get scared. I think I might be having a panic attack. 

*

In the evening, I twist a syringe out of his hand, the sleeve of his dressing gown rolled up above his elbow. We are in his room. I’ve just opened the door and found him here, like this. I hit him, hit him hard, with force and desperation, and we end up crashing against the wall. He doesn’t even fight back.  
I don’t let him go; we slip down to the floor in a shaking mess. I’m clutching at his dressing gown, holding him tight. This is what failure tastes like, I recognise the bitter sting of it: pictures flashing in my head; white bandage on his hands; the needle approaching a light blue vein in his naked forearm; his blood on the pavement: failure, failure, failure. I can never be enough. 

“Don’t. Do. This.” I utter each word like it was a command. 

They are more of a prayer. _Don’t do this. To me. Please._

An apologetic look without real conviction, _I can’t help it, John,_ then he lowers his head, resting it on my shoulder: a familiar, comfortable gesture. We are staying like this. With one hand, clumsily, I pull down the sleeve of his dressing gown. 

“You should leave me, John,” he whispers with a tone of resignation and sadness. “I’ll break you if you don’t.”

Distance: His only mean of protection. He’s never known anything else, poor Sherlock. Let me teach you. 

But then, I’m not any better than him, am I? 

“I’m okay,” I lie. “Just don’t do this.” _Please. For me._

No answer. 

“Sherlock?”

He merely stares at me: an incredulous expression frozen on his face. Baker Street 221/b is a deserted island with two shipwrecked men. Eventually, one of them will cannibalise the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway there. How did you like it so far?


	6. Chapter 6

The call from Lestrade two days later finds us on the couch : I’m watching telly with his long legs in my lap, and he is reading a book about degenerative cardiovascular diseases. Maybe it will help us to see clearer, I don’t know. How we’ve ended up in this relationship – if it can be called one – is a mystery to me. We are not lovers. Not exactly colleagues. Friends? Perhaps, yeah. “Friends” sounds good. Tenable. Nice and safe. 

I watch him reading, his lips forming silent words, fragments of phrases as he memorises the text. Very good friends. The expression is dissolved by the movement of his lips, and the definition fades away. 

We are not lovers. I have no explanation. No definition. No words. Only the silent movement of his lips.

Maybe he frightens me with his overstated virginity. Overstated by the innocent gestures he tempts me with every fucking day. By the crispiness of his collars. By his ridiculous cluelessness. (Lips slowly forming _cardiac dysrhythmia_.) It kills me.

It calls to an instinct so powerful and ancient I’m terrified to name it. His legs in my lap; I can even touch his ankle: wrap my hand around it; drawing slow, lazy circles above his Achilles tendon; move my fingers just a little bit higher, feeling his tibia, long and elegant. _And you’re my obsession; I love you to the bones._ *

That’s the moment that Lestrade’s call splits into two: an actual past and a never-to-happen, imaginary (possible?) future. He rushes to catch his phone, the pieces of the unfinished touch falling to the floor around us, later I might pick them up and close them into a box with all the never-happened touches and never-spoken-out words we have. I’ll collect them there. It’s my version of a mind palace: it only contains our unfulfilled intentions. It’s full of them; brims over with them. I am not sure how long I will be able to keep them inside. Now, I still can force the lid closed.

Anyway, Lestrade. It’s a murder, thank God. The victim was killed in his living room while his wife was sleeping upstairs. A kitchen knife was planted into his chest with surgical precision; literally. It split his heart into two. 

The main door is wide open, implying that the killer came from outside. Obvious; a little bit too obvious. The wife is like a frightened animal, a petite woman in her forties. Her voice is thin, barely audible. 

“She isn’t our killer.” Sherlock pouts as we step out to the little garden behind the house. “This all”, he waves his left hand daintily in the direction of the building, “isn’t right.”  
I know what he means: every detail screams about a set-up scene, like it’s been staged by someone. 

He seems lost deeply in his thoughts, but in his eyes the same old familiar excitement sparkles. God, I missed it so much. I can feel a grin spreading across my face. He doesn’t miss it, of course.

“What about appropriate behaviour at crime scenes now?”

“The rule applies only for a five meter radius around the corpse.”

We end up laughing so hard that I must stuff his scarf into my mouth to dampen the obscene voices I emit.

In the cab he resumes his deductions. _Clearly not the wife. However, the scenic aspect is puzzling. If it was the wife, I would say she wanted to imply the killer had come from outside. Yet, she is innocent. Obviously, our killer intended to incriminate her: all the fingerprints on the knife belong to her; the killer didn’t bother to clean it off._ He goes silent.

“Have you noticed her posture?” I ask casually. 

“Abused? Yes. The husband was an alcoholic; has beaten her up on a weekly basis. It indicates a relative of the woman, or less probably a friend of hers, but then again, why would they drag the wife into it?”

A few moments of silence, he drops his head back, takes a deep breath, then goes on speaking.

“It doesn’t make sense. Unless the killer knew that the police would turn to me for help and I would easily see through this set-up.”

“I doubt he –or she – did.”

He nods.

“Might be a double trick, then. Pointing away from... what?”

We stay silent for the rest of the trip. We both know that the puzzle won’t be solved today and that we have a long night ahead of us with at least two patches; him speaking to me feverishly and me listening expertly, and it will be just perfect happiness.

*

We notice the comment on his website in the evening. Only a name: Mary Landauer. 

Google informs us she was a housewife killed by her husband in 1985 in the U.S., and said husband later became famous as one of the most prolific serial killers of all times. The circumstances of the murder are particularly interesting: the woman was killed in their own house, with a knife piercing her heart. However, the husband was never officially convicted for this first crime. The police started to make the connection later, when he had been already arrested as a suspect for a series of murders committed between 1990 and 1995, but they never found any evidence in Mary Landauer’s case.

I finish the reading and look up at Sherlock’s ecstatic face.

“Hmmm, I love this.”

_So that’s how it feels._

“Care to elaborate?” 

“He –or she, more probably he – isn’t an ordinary criminal who acts on passion or for profit. Oh no, he has principles: he is an interesting one. And now he has sent me a clue, I feel flattered.” 

“Love is in the air,” I mumble sarcastically. 

“Jealous?” He raises one quizzical eyebrow.

“Not at all.” 

“Good.”

I’d like to wipe off his smug smile. I’d like to kiss him. I won’t. 

“Come here, John.” He says unexpectedly. 

“What for?” I ask suspiciously, but I step closer at the very moment he utters the command, as though invisible strings were drawing me towards him. 

It’s always like this. Maybe I’ve been spending my life having these strings attached to me, becoming tenser and tighter as time flowed unalterably towards that day at Bart’s. _I’m your puppet, Sherlock._ He turns me into a toy just like Moriarty wanted to when he dressed me into a jacked stuffed with explosives. But Sherlock doesn’t need explosives, does he? God, no. He is more subtle, more refined than that. 

Now I’m standing in front of him, he touches the sleeve of my jumper, fingers fumbling hesitantly with the cuff.

“John, I... I just want to say thank you for... for... you know.”

“I know.” I do.

I take his hand into mine, stopping the anxious movement of his fingers. We are holding hands. It’s ridiculous: two schoolboys in full bloom of their first love. It’s ridiculous and it’s sacred, it’s innocent and full of horrors. It’s us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *: Silverchair: Ana’s song
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, and Somanyhands, you are the best! <3


	7. Chapter 7

The following murder is inevitable. Sherlock’s already deduced it, so it must be.

We are closer to each other these days, though we don’t have any more the excuse of his injury: it’s simply our choice. He is as chaste as ever, completely unconscious of the effect of these contacts on me. He lets me loop his scarf around his neck, lays against my shoulder lazily on the couch, myriads of moments of closeness composing the tension that pierces through my eardrums straight into my brain. 

I have dirty thoughts. I want to pin him down to the floor; hold his hands down; invade him with my sheer, naked desire. His trust kills me. He can’t see all these fantasies. He wouldn’t suppose any of the terrible, awful scenarios running in my head continually.

I barely dare to touch him for fear of letting the monsters out. I would do anything to protect him: how many times do I have to write it down; say it out loud; carve it into the wooden front door of Baker Street 221b? Whoever said that love is the most beautiful, pure, elevating thing in the world was spectacularly wrong. It’s losing yourself. It’s spiralling into annihilation. And maybe - only if you are very, very lucky - you come out as someone new, whole and probably better. If you fall in love with the right person. Otherwise you will be destroyed; left alone to pick up the pieces and desperately try to tape them together again. That’s what love is. 

_Will you hold me, I wonder._

I grab his arm, and he turns his head away from the telly, directing his gaze to me. I’m not sure. I’m still seeing blood-stained white bandages covering his hands: they have been gone for a week, _and they were never blood-stained_ , but the aura of defencelessness envelopes him and, in my mind, finds a physical manifestation, I guess. A metaphor. It’s just a metaphor, I remind myself. He has a brilliant mind but barely enough tools to protect himself. He needs me; my hand to hold a gun. I knew it the first time we met, when I felt pulled toward him, _“I need you John. Will you shoot a cabbie for me? Will you punch the chief superintendent in the face for me? Will you become a fugitive for me, with me? Will you watch me die, please?”_ He didn’t even notice. He never notices it. Me. 

Blood-stained white gauze. Yes, just a metaphor. I’m not hallucinating.   
He looks concerned and places his palm on my hand still holding his arm: a gesture meant to be placatory, reassuring. Not burning and unbearable.   
I pull my hand away, and he puts on an offended expression. We can’t find the words. Will we ever?

*

The victim this time is a nurse: a middle-aged woman found dead by her colleague at the end of the night shift. The aspect of a set-up mars again the scene: she is hanging from the heat-tube in an empty room; the hints of a suicide, but there is no chair or any suitable object in her vicinity. How did she get up there then? This, and a name painted in black on the blank white floor under her feet, Celia Hobbes, connects it evidently to the previous case.

Google helps us with the name again: Celia Hobbes was a nurse in the 40’s who killed some of the patients she took care of. She conceived it as euthanasia, but the patients in most of the cases weren’t suffering from a lethal illness. She was never convicted. The murders came to light only after her death when a relative found her diary and made it public for a respectable amount of money. 

It takes another half an hour of inquiry to find out that, in the last few months, several deaths with suspicious circumstances have been reported from the hospital.   
We tell Lestrade about the message on Sherlock’s website.

“Now it seems he or she left their love letter at the scene.” he pokes his head to the directions of the writing.

“Quite.” Sherlock nods, throwing a glance at the huge black letters on the floor smelling disinfectant and fresh paint: a headache-inducing, aggressive chemical smell. “It’s a man,” he adds after a moment.

“That’s all you can deduce?”

“Of course not.”

I know perfectly well that the silence preceding his brilliant trajectories of deductions. He steps next to me, steeples his fingers under his chin and speaks up in a low, quiet voice.   
“Our killer, as I said, is a man. About forty, possibly a little bit younger. Strong sense of morality. Medical, probably chirurgical past. Presumably, he has seen the documentary about “All times serial killers” two weeks ago, or he is simply an expert in crime history. Only one of the murders was presented in the show, but with minimal research, he could easily find another case that fitted his purpose.”

He arrives to an abrupt halt; his face goes still, as if frozen. Lestrade doesn’t seem to notice the suspense; he takes it for a closure and heads for the staff to discuss the removal of the body.

“We are going home now.” Sherlock announces and storms out of the room. I follow him.

We are sitting in the cab; my eyes are wandering around his lithe frame, a series of casual glances out of the corner of my eyes. London is starting to wake up around us: the buzz and the hum of the city becoming louder and more complex, a tableau of many colours and shapes. Only he remains completely still. I admire him silently; maybe even my mouth falls open a little. The morning light frames his form against the window. Our life seems to be an endless series of taxi rides.

“What’s your opinion about my deductions, John?” he speaks up unexpectedly.

I cough anxiously to clear my throat. 

“I think you’ve got it right, as far as I can judge.”

He nods and studies my face for a long time. I’m looking at the blood-stained bandage on his hands. I can’t remember when we put it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Somanyhands for the beta! :)


	8. Chapter 8

He tries to hold it back. His effort is an excruciating pressure at the back of my skull, slowly cracking it into two fragmented pieces. I close my eyes, rubbing my eyelids with two shaking fingers while I hear him sigh heavily. 

_To whom do we want to lie, Sherlock,_ I’d like to ask but I don’t. I surrender myself to the unnerving silence. He doesn’t say it out loud anymore; he is suffering in an airtight space defined by the four edges of the couch. 

It doesn’t matter - his feeble attempt to protect me. I still can hear him; his voice, whispering close to my left ear: _I’m bored, John, it’s killing me. I have no distraction since he died. Do something John. Help me please. Stop this, just stop, please, John. Will you do this for me_ , a constant murmur in my head like the sound of the sea from far away. I dawn on the fact that his personal hell, at some point, became both of ours. When I’ve been dead for thousand of years, I will still hear his sweet, petulant, suffering voice like it came from inside; from my mind; my heart. No burning flames, or any other ridiculously trite form of torture that hell is keeping for me, can compete with this helpless feeling.  
He doesn’t say it out loud, though. He sinks his teeth into his lower lip instead. I can see a bruise forming there. He looks at me: a silent apology. I crouch next to him, placing my hand on his forehead, stroking the soft hairs around his temple.

“We could go out for dinner.”

He glares at me like it was an exceptionally disgusting idea. But then I see that he is considering it. He forces himself to consider it. He is fighting back. _That’s it Sherlock, fight._

“I guess we could.”

That’s what we do. I even manage to talk him onto a movie that he seems to enjoy.

Today, I won.

*

“Where do you think he is buried?” 

Although I expected this question a long ago, it surprises me now.

“No idea. I can call Mycroft and ask him if you want,” I answer and reach immediately for my phone, hiding my face as I turn away, red with anger.

“Don’t.”

I look up, surprised.

“I just wondered. Don’t want to place flowers on his gravestone or anything.”

“You do miss him.” I reply simply. It’s finally out.

“He was work, John. A puzzle, though a tricky one.” And with that, he picks up the violin and starts to play Moonlight sonata, one of my favourites, letting me ponder the meaning of his words. They lift tons of weights from my shoulders. _He was work, John._

They help me through the following days. They help me each day to come up with new ideas to distract him: it’s easy now that I don’t have to compete with a shadow. Sherlock is in a good mood too, planning crazy experiments to which I assist enthusiastically. Even Lestrade calls us with a triple murder, it’s really like Christmas, and I’m walking on air, my head up in the sky. 

When have I become so dependent on his moods? When have I become so dependent on him? It mustn’t be normal, but I just don’t fucking care anymore. My world is Sherlock Holmes and Earth might go around the Sun, or around the Moon, or round and round a garden like a teddy bear; that will never change the fact that he is the centre of my universe. No, even more. He is my whole universe. I’m afraid I might go insane. 

Actually, he does seem concerned, sometimes, when he thinks I don’t see him. He looks at me worriedly, with sadness and guilt in his eyes.

Sometimes, he even goes as far as to be gentle: careful, like this morning. I’m sitting by the window, staring out of my head. Lately I just like resting here and thinking about nothing special, being lost in the no man’s land between thoughts and reality.

He must have found it disquieting for some reason that is unknown to me. He stands behind my armchair – that’s true, I’ve removed it so it doesn’t face his, but the window instead – he is standing behind me, and places his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it slightly. Why is he doing this?

“John?”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“Don’t think about it.”

Like it was that easy, thank you. Those days, I wish I could forget them; his suffering hovering over me every morning, and I’m terrified it would turn again into an eventless, ordinary day when I won’t be enough. Never can be enough. Not for him. 

But then, most of the time the day goes on with a case; an experiment; a program I come up with, and it’s okay until next morning which, curiously, finds me again in my armchair. I might spend my nights here sometimes; making plans to grab and to hold his attention. Last night, I definitely didn’t sleep in my bed... I find it out when I realise that I’m wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. Disquieting, he is right.

The last few days were quite okay. Why am I worrying then? I shouldn’t. It can’t help. Something must have been stuck in my mind: the memory of helplessness; I might have a PTSD. I laugh at the thought: what Afghanistan and war and being shot couldn’t give me, he hands me over without effort. Without even noticing.  
He gives me everything. He is resting his hand on my shoulder, looking down at my face from behind, desperately trying to decipher me; I can see his thoughts whirling. 

Will you solve this ultimate mystery, Sherlock? Will you solve me, I wonder. 

I don’t know any more if I’d like him to. I’m afraid I’ve fucked up everything. 

He pulls me up by my arm. 

“You should have a shower. Come. I’ll find you a change of clothes in the meanwhile.”

That’s how we tend to turn each other into a child. Are the roles interchangeable? That would be perfection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Somanyhands for her patience and her support. :)


	9. Chapter 9

The scene is a set-up, it must be. A living room, Victorian-style, with an open fireplace, a skull on the mantelpiece, and two armchairs dramatically facing each other. Currently, only one of them is occupied, the hero is out of scene, lying on the couch at the periphery, all theatrical and mysterious.

This is the scene where the tragedy takes place. Our tragedy, isn’t it, Sherlock? What title should I give it?

He removed my revolver, hid it somewhere I wouldn’t find. I don’t know if with the intention of defending me or himself. Could I shoot him? To stop the pain that emerges from the centre of his chest as he exhales; the pain that is radiating from his eyes searching for a focus-point but finding none? Could I stop this? _Stop his heart,_ the words are familiar, I smell chlorine and water and a beginning. 

But it’s not the heart I have to stop. It’s his brain; the beautiful, devious machine; pleasure and doom of my life: I’m already starting to get the tone of ancient Greek tragedies... Maybe a Shakespearian one would be more appropriate in our case. 

The same old endless monologue goes on in my mind. Sherlock is silent on the couch but never in my head. I have to get out of here. _Go for a walk, clear my head,_ the usual phrases I tell him every time. He doesn’t look at me. Never does. Only supernumeraries leaving the scene, why should he bother? I don’t blame him: he is too lost in his own suffering. 

I don’t blame him. Never did. It’s always been my decision, and I’ll take all the responsibility if necessary, if it comes to that one day. That’s true that I wanted to distract him; to make him happy, but he’s never asked for it. 

I can’t stop thinking of him as I make my way to the empty school building, my hands busily typing a text. In a half an hour then. The world is not going to miss a molester, a teacher who takes advantage of his students and posts the pictures over the internet. 

How stupid, I could easily get to him using Sherlock’s methods. (Something’s rubbed off on me, after all.) I’ll wait for him in the empty school. It’s Saturday evening, nobody will disturb us. 

I feel generous tonight. Maybe I’ll offer this bastard a choice: the scandal or the poison. 

Tomorrow, Sherlock can continue the investigation, thought I’m sure he knows the answer by know. He has the solution, just too afraid to say it out loud.  
So, poison this time. I touch the soft, powdery material wrapped in a piece of nylon in my pocket. It evokes our first case, and I can’t help smiling. Sherlock will like this, won’t he?  
Anyway, this amount of death I’m holding in my hand is enough for two people: my escape plan. In case he didn’t like it. 

He must know it by now. 

I don’t blame him: he can’t help being bored; being genial; being Sherlock. My brilliant, brilliant Sherlock. The things I would do for you are frightening and incredible. He knows this as well; sometimes I catch a glimpse of regret on his face, _sorry John, I can’t do anything against it. I’m like this, you see._

It’s okay. That’s my role in the play. I’m doing what I’m destined for, and at this moment of completion I feel myself so close to Jim. He was just playing his role too, playing the game; we are all playing our parts. We are all bound to the needs of the amazing, dangerous mind of Sherlock Holmes: he pulls us into his game and never lets us go, and then Jim died and maybe I’m about to die in this empty classroom, because you can never know how the game will end.

I leave the door wide open and sit at the first table opposite the teacher’s desk.

It was too much. The loss. The resurrection. How could Sherlock ever think that I am able to cope with this? It’s broken me; I’m aware of the damage he caused to me. Is he?  
I’m waiting here for my victim to arrive, a spider in its web, _oh, Jim, stop please, leave me alone._

They were together on the roof. The moment before one of them died and the other made everyone believe that he was dead as well. A moment of absolute intimacy, two people at the threshold, and the world ceases to exist for them for a few minutes. I hate this thought. The jealousy burns a gaping hole in my chest. If I looked down I could see my throbbing heart through that hole, it’s out in the open, nothing to protect it. _That’s what you have done to me, Sherlock._

But I still don’t blame him. He didn’t have other choice, did he? I don’t think so. It’s a classic tragedy: everyone just follows their path and the consequences are inevitable. Have we ever had a choice? Jim? Me? Or Sherlock? My hearts spurts out drops of blood onto the table. 

Footsteps in the corridor. Not my victim. Sherlock. Of course, he would stop this, he is so much smarter than me. Even the first two murders were incredibly hard to carry out without him noticing. Only his faith in me stood on my side. After the second, he knew anyway. 

And here we are, the hero enters the scene, his long coat dramatically whirling around him, quite a cliché, but I love clichés. They are tranquillizing. Clichés are safe islands in my life with him. 

He seems tired and battered as he looks at me, at least that’s how I imagine because I don’t have the force to turn my head towards him. I’m looking straight ahead like someone was holding my neck from behind, _oh Jim, stop._ I catch myself smiling. He steps in front of me, a telltale lack of surprise on his face.

He sits down next to me. His voice is soft, the way you speak to a frightened child, or a startled horse. I’ve never heard him speak like this. 

“Come home, John. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

“I killed them.”

“I know. I knew after the hospital. Maybe after the first murder, just didn’t want to believe. Not really.”

“I killed them.” My voice is shaking, I don’t know why. My heart is an enraged animal in the transparent cage of my ribs.

I’ve lost everything: he is despising me, I know. I’m pathetic. I have always been. I’m not him, I’m not Jim, I’m ordinary. Trying to play the game, but I don’t understand the rules.  
He places his hands on my shoulders, gently turning me to face him. 

“It’s okay, John, it’s over.”

No, it’s not. Never will be. He will get bored, and he will suffer through endless days and nights, and I have a heart out in the open, I have nothing to protect us. He will jump off a building for real, he will overdose, he will shoot a bullet through his brain just to stop the stream of thoughts. 

My face is wet; tears are landing on the wooden surface of the table with a damp thud. I despise myself.

He pulls me closer, my face is buried into his coat, and it feels like home after a long and fantastic journey. Tealeaves and gunpowder, a blend of serenity and jeopardy, overwhelming, too much, too much. 

He kisses me. For the first time in our lives, we kiss. I think of the poison in my pocket and the feeling of his tongue in my mouth, it makes sense somehow. I realise that I’ve been wrong: Sherlock is anything but innocent. How could I be so blind? He is dangerous; consuming; a black hole pulling in everything around him: he is the point where the universe collapses. 

At this moment I know with perfect clarity that I’m lost. My plans, my intentions, my will, everything that makes John Watson is lost forever, and maybe I should be terrified, but I know that all this – me – doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because every story has to end sometime and at the end of every sentence there must be a period, and anyway, one day the sun will grow old and expand to consume Earth and its habitants. Of course, Sherlock must have deleted this unimportant piece of information ages ago.  
I don’t know why but I must smile at the thought that, in Sherlock’s genial, childlike mind, the story never ends, and John Watson, Sherlock Holmes and Baker Street 221b stand forever.

 _It’s okay, John, it’s okay,_ he keeps repeating and I want to believe him. He is everything, I can’t not believe him. _I’m sorry, John, he says, I should have known, he says, he almost succeeded even in his death: he almost took you from me, can’t you see that? Oh, he was good, thank God for that he is dead. It’s over now; just let me take you home._

I let him.

I don’t say a word in the cab, not when he leads me upstairs, when he undresses me, the mirror image of my careful movements; he only has me to learn gentleness and care from, how to take care another human being, and he is a fast-learner. I should have known.

He surprises me. He can grow up in one night; he was always the petulant child whose steps I had to watch, and now he is stroking my hair, a soothing gesture he learned from me as well. He lies next to me, his hands never losing the contact even for a second, and he goes on speaking, not the meaning but the sound of his voice that is important, calming half-sentences that I catch. I close my eyes and try to believe that everything will be well. That Sherlock can rewrite the laws of classic tragedies. 

After all, he could come back from death. It might be another kind of story, then.

Maybe I’ve been wrong from the beginning: maybe not every great story is about heroes and villains. Ours is about something else. I wonder about what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betad by the lovely Somanyhands, as always. :)
> 
> I'm grateful for any feedback - as always. :P


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Million thanks to Somanyhands for all the help, support and patience! ;)

It’s been a month since that night in the school. A lot of things changed. We’ve figured it out, finally. We’ve figured it out together.  
All the never-finished touches; never-said sentences; half-words led us to this moment when I finally solve the puzzle, button by button. I reveal his chest under the silky fabric of his shirt. Revelation. Evidence. 

It’s maddening how close we were all along, and yet we didn’t see it.

It’s been hanging there all along. We could just reach for it at any moment, easily.  
As easily as we reach for it now, after months of waiting and hoping and not daring and disbelieving. Finally, we reach for it, like you grab a ripe fruit, juicy and sweet, on a lazy summer afternoon. The last moment before it would fall to the ground and split open, fraught with the sultriness of summer. 

I would expect his hands to tremble, but they are completely still. He is still. Frozen, you would say. It’s always like this with him: everything happens inside. Under the surface. The tension of his existence, radiating through pale white skin. It’s inside even now, just the waves come to me like the resonance of a terrifying force. A sigh against my neck. It tears him apart; it would tear him apart if I let. I don’t.

“John” The voice sounds alien in my ears. Not his voice; a muffled, broken sound, nothing like he could ever produce. “John...”

“Ssssh, I know. I know, Sherlock.”

Yes, I do, of course. I know. I’ll take care of him. And I know he will take care of me as well. 

He rests his head on my chest, and I’m caressing his nape. A lulling gesture; parental, you could say. I’ve done this countless times before. 

“I will take care of you.” No more unspoken words.

His hands seek their way to my hip, and he is clutching; looking for support, safety and sobriety. 

There is no sobriety. Never was. 

“Hold me,” he asks.

He places his hand on mine, stopping the rhythmical strokes. “I need...” He is breathing hard. He is afraid: He’s never done this. Doesn’t know what to expect. “I’m going to...”

“It’s okay.” Yes, it is. Everything will be okay with us.

A kiss breathed onto his forehead. 

I know what I’m doing: well-practiced, leisurely moves. No rush. 

“It’s okay, Sherlock. Just let me...”

Fingernails digging into the pillow. He jerks slightly when my confident hand closes around him again. Just a few more strokes, and it’s over: he comes silently, his mouth forming a quiet o, like it’s a moment of enlightenment: the pieces click together. 

And that’s the moment when I say it. 

Three tiny little words. 

The simple truth of them is like a mouthful of clean water. Unceremonious, modest, even plain: the most overused, trite sentence in the world. So overused that it became perfectly smooth and circular like a pebble washed in the river-bed for decades. 

That’s what Jim couldn’t fathom. That’s how we’ve beaten him in the end. 

In the end, every story is about these three tiny little words. Everything comes back to this.

This is the final problem: our final problem, Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked it, please let me know. :)


End file.
